1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of sampling, feeding or inoculating of material from or to a vessel or conduit.
2. Description of Related Art
Quality products require precise control of many phases of a production process. It is also true that it is necessary to maintain the integrity of the process and to protect the surroundings from the process. While many advances have been made in the development of sensors for measuring the condition of a specific process on-line which will aid in maintaining this process integrity, many of the characteristics of processes still need to be measured off-line through the physical and/or chemical analysis of an actual sample of the process. The removal of the sample from the process has to be conducted in a way that will preserve the integrity of the process, the surrounding environment as well as the integrity and character of the sample itself.
In a related but different procedure, many processes require inoculation of seed organisms or catalysts into a process to initiate the conversion of a set of substrate materials into other process intermediates or a final product or set of products. Sometimes this seed material is a live organism, a component of a live organism or another form of catalyst. In any case, these materials frequently need to be added to a process in a way that maintains the integrity of the process, the materials being added and their source, the integrity of the surrounding environment, or, perhaps, all of these.
There are examples of devices in the prior art that provide a means to deliver or withdraw materials from a process while maintaining the integrity of the process, the sample or the feed material or the surrounding environment but these devices are restricted in their effectiveness, particularly in their abilities to maintain the integrity or character of either the sampled material or material being added to the process because these devices have designs that are optimized for use in certain physical orientations. When used in orientations other than those they are designed for, these devices frequently suffer from the presence of crevices, particularly between component joints exposed to the process, and from design features that inhibit free flow and drainage of flowable materials through the device, resulting in pooling within the device. Both the crevices and pooling phenomena result in material carryover from one sampling, feeding or inoculation episode to the next, causing the deterioration in quality of any subsequent material introduced through sampling, feeding or inoculating into these devices.
It is also the case that some of these devices are not designed to be reused or, if they are designed for reuse, must be removed from the process and cleaned and sometimes resterilized before being able to be used again with the process.
There is a need for an apparatus that can be fitted, either permanently or removably, into a process which will allow materials to be fed, inoculated to or sampled from a process through a device principally designed to provide access to the process from above but which may provide reasonably good access to a process when installed at angles from vertical to horizontal. It is also desirable that an embodiment of this device provide a means by which it can be washed and sterilized in place and a means by which the thermal and electrical conditions inside the device be generally insulated from those of the process into which it is inserted. It is further desirable that the device, when placed in installations from vertical to horizontal relative to the process, be able to accumulate flowable materials occurring in the device in an area where they may be expelled or washed out by the introduction of other flowable materials under pressure coming either from the process or a second source through another access into the device.
In the existing art, there are examples of devices that provide a means for adding materials to the process but do not provide a means for washing and resterilizing in place and for effectively draining sampled material or cleansing, rinsing or sterilizing solutions from within the device.
Referring to FIG. 15 of the present invention, a description of a Background Art device will be described. The Background Art device consists, in essence, of a pipe section 300 mounted through the wall of a vessel or conduit 301. One end 303 of the pipe section 300 opens into the process contained in the vessel or conduit 301 and the other end 305 opens to a supply located outside the vessel or conduit 301. Flow into or out of the vessel or conduit 301 is controlled by a flow control valve 307 mounted outside the vessel or conduit 301 at a position intermediate between the supply and the outer wall of the vessel or conduit 301.
The above design approach is universally used for making additions and, in many cases, withdrawals from processes because it is simple, easily maintained, cost effective to purchase and operate and lends itself easily to a wide range of desirable processing upgrades, redundancies and controls. For sanitary or aseptic processing, the most important of these may be the ease with which seal redundancy (in the form of redundant in-line flow control valves) and secondary valving (for in-place cleaning and sterilizing) can be designed and added to the basic in-line flow control valve 307.
For example, referring to FIG. 15 again, a secondary flow control valve 309 can easily be added to obtain a redundant seal. The portion 314 of the pipe section 300 upstream of the secondary flow control valve 309 can easily be cleaned by a supply of material through the opening 305 and out of the drain passage 315 when the secondary flow control valve 309 is closed and the valve 317 is open. In addition, the portion 316 of the pipe section 300 between the secondary flow control valve 309 and the seal of the primary flow control valve 307 can be easily cleaned by closing the secondary flow control valve 309 and opening the valve 319 in the inlet passage 321 and the valve 325 in the drain passage 323. Therefore, flow through the inlet passage 321, the portion 316 and out of the drain passage 323.
Today, the average cost of valves is decreasing, while the average cost of failed batches of process is increasing. Therefore, it is not surprising to one familiar with industrial production today to see the great proliferation and sophistication of primary and secondary redundant valving systems being designed and installed in an effort to ensure better monitoring, control and maintenance of the environment around the primary flow control seal with the process and a secondary redundant seal, when present, as well as the environment between the two valve seals in an effort to protect and ensure the quality and integrity of the process.
In spite of all of the design effort and expense going into development and installation of evermore elaborate conventional external in-line valving systems to control flow into vessels (and contain the process within), no comprehensive solution has yet been offered to rid production systems of the deadspace 311 that occurs between the seal of the primary flow control valve 307 and the opening 303 of the pipe section 300. Without the availability of such a device, there is also no device available that allows, nor has a device or system been made available that would permit periodic recleaning and resterilizing of such a deadspace 311 within the production environment periodically during production runs. As a consequence, any type of supply port 313 into a vessel or conduit 301, including gas sparging devices, may experience stagnation, material build-up and line blockages, particularly during extended production runs. Since blockages become more severe with time, the inability to intermitently reclean and/or resterilized to remove blockages and restore full flow capacity can significantly diminish the operator's ability to control and optimize the process.
Eliminating the risk to the process posed by an uncleanable deadspace 311 currently existing in supply port systems as well as many sample capture or harvesting valve systems would be an important step in assuring the quality and productivity of processes. Ideally the solution should be done without losing the advantages offered by current supply port system designs, including the ability to clean and steam sterilize the upstream portion 316 of the seal of the primary flow control valve 307 with the process while it remains on-going, the ability to design in flow control valve redundancy and the ability to monitor, control and maintain the environment between primary and secondary (redundant) flow control valve seals. It is also of value for the solutioin to be usable in a variety of process applications that are heat sensitive without damaging those processes.